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Science and Technology – Trivia

Is China’s first Space Station Module that is the nation’s first step towards its ultimate goal of developing, building, and operating a large Space station as a permanent human presence in Low Earth Orbit. The vehicle was launched on Sep 29, 2012 aboard a Long March 2F Launch vehicle. Tiangong means Heavenly Palace. Tiangong – 1 orbits Earth at 330 to 370 kms with an inclination of 42 degrees.

Billion Acts of Green:

Is the largest environmental service and advocacy campaign in the World. A global campaign that inspires and rewards individual acts and larger organizational initiatives that help reduce carbon emissions and support sustainability. It’s a global referendum on the environment.

SAGA – 220:

ISRO has built the India’s fastest supercomputer in 2011 in terms of theoretical peak performance of 220 TeraFLOPS (220 Trillion Floating point operations per second). The super computer was built by Satish Dhawan Supercomputing Facility located at Vikram Sarabhai Space centre (VSSC), Thiruvananthapuram at a cost of about Rs.14 crores. The new Graphic Processing Unit based supercomputer, is being used by the space scientists for solving complex aerospace problems.

Operation Shady RAT:

Is a massive advanced persistent threat (APT) – type attack campaign that has been ongoing worldwide for five years and has stolen intellectual property from 70 government agencies, international corporations, non profits, and others in 14 countries. The Shady RAT attackers also deployed a tool called HTran that helps disguise their locations. The attackers targeted cyber espionage hacks hid some of their activities behind digital images. They used stenography – A relatively rarely deployed technique for hiding malicious code or data behind image files or other innocuous – looking files.

MABEL:

The world’s fastest bipedal robot, with the ability to sprint at up to 10.9 kph. More specifically, MABEL is the world’s fastest “kneed’’ bipedal robot, which just means that it’s the fastest robot that can run in a similar manner to us humans. The project has been led by Jessy Grizzle, professor of electrical engineering in the Department of Electrical engineering and computer science at the University of Michigan.

BVO and its related concerns:

BVO – Brominated Vegetable Oil is a synthetic chemical that is created when vegetable oil is bonded to the element bromine. It’s added as an emulsifier, to prevent the flavoring from separating and floating to the surface. Bromine is heavy, and it keeps the oil from floating to the top of water-based solutions, like soft drinks. In very high amounts drunk over a long period of time, BVO can build up in the body and cause toxic effects. High amounts of bromine can cause skin breakouts known as halogen acne. Can also result in loss of appetite and abdominal pain, fatigue, cardiac arrhythmias.

Captive Power Station:

Captive power station or captive generating plant is a power plant set up by any person to generate electricity primarily for his own use and includes a power plant set up by any co-operative society or association of persons for generating electricity primarily for use of members of such cooperatives society or association.

Industries, which consume a large chunk of the power generated and distributed by the utilities and also provide the larger portion of the revenue, have to compete in the global market for their products and services. Non-availability, poor quality and reliability of grid power along with exorbitantly high tariffs have a significant impact on the competitiveness of the industry. This led to the emergence of captive generation. Captive power today accounts for at least 20% of the total installed capacity in the country.